Conventionally, there have been proposed various kinds of environmentally friendly hybrid cars and the like. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 8-154307 proposes a hybrid vehicle which guides a driver to travel without relying on an internal combustion engine to thereby reduce air pollution.
According to Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-354331, a charging device includes charging means for charging from a 100V commercial power supply and charging means for charging from a 200V commercial power supply in a vehicle.
In this vehicle, a 100V commercial power supply can be connected to a port provided in the vehicle, thereby charging a battery. When using a 200V commercial power supply to perform charging, the 200V commercial power supply is connected to a ground-based charger provided separately from the vehicle, and the ground-based charger is connected to the port of the vehicle, to perform charging.
Further, a paper entitled “Commencement of Collaborative Development of Industrial Electric Cars for The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc. (Sep. 2, 2005, The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc./Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.)” proposes an electric car in which a vehicle-mounted charger can be charged by converting an alternating current of 100V to a direct current 400V, while a lithium-ion battery can be charged by converting a 200V alternating current to a direct current of 400V.
For the hybrid vehicle described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 8-154307, however, no description is given of means for charging from two power supplies having different voltages.
Moreover, for the vehicle described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-354331, positions in the vehicle of a connector to which the 100V commercial power supply is connected and of the port to which the 200V commercial power supply is connected via the ground-based charger are not clearly described.
In the electric car described in the paper entitled “Commencement of Collaborative Development of Industrial Electric Cars for The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc.,” the positions of a connection unit to which a 100V commercial power supply is connected and of a connection unit to which a 200V commercial power supply is connected are both provided in a rear end portion of a vehicle main body.
Unlike electric cars, however, hybrid vehicles have an engine mounted thereon that will reach high temperatures, and depending on positional relationship with this engine, each of port and connector requires heat-resistant treatment. It is extremely difficult, particularly for a port through which a high current passes to be subjected to heat-resistant treatment completely. The above paper and the above patent documents do not provide any description or suggestion whatsoever about such problems.